Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Brokered convention is just cable talk. They need revenues

Republicans will rally behind Donald Trump before Cleveland. The donor class is tired of burning millions to stop the guy. He will meet with them, allay their fears, and move on to his general election mode.

Brokered convention is just cable talk. They need audiences. They need the revenues. They do not want to let the election die.

Don't take my word. Ask Newt. I remember the 1980s when the Democrats had the House and thwarted President Reagan and the American people at every turn. A cocky young college professor from Georgia who had tried three times before becoming that state's first Republican congressman since Reconstruction. The Dixiecrats held the Southern congressional seats until 1994 -- 30 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- but that's another story. I remember watching this white-haired professor preach after hours on C-Span. His words were a prophecy of a Republican Revolution that would come after the Reagan Revolution was over.

Newt Gingrich was right. The fellow who had pierced the line in 1978 led the Revolution of 1994 which wrested control of the House from the Democrats for the first time in 40 years.

Gingrich threw cold water all over the idea of a brokered convention, which Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol has been plotting. If no candidate gets 50 percent of the delegates on the first ballot, then on the second ballot the pledged delegates can become “un-pledged” and support whomever the party bosses tell them to support.

“It’s childish nonsense,” Gingrich said. “There are two potential presidential nominees. One is named Donald. One is named Ted. The idea that some clever Washington intellectual or power broker — put quote marks around ‘power broker’ — can step into an election in which millions have voted and magically change the trajectory of history? It’s goofy. There’s two players standing.”

Gingrich speculated that Trump and Cruz might actually form an alliance, similar to how they did in the early days of the campaign, in order to prevent a brokered convention at the last minute.

“If Trump is at 45 percent does he negotiate with Cruz?”

“They will band together and have 85 percent of the delegates between them,” Gingrich said. “Both of these guys are committed to breaking up the old order.”

“How is somebody who’s never run going to stand up on national television and on social media [as the brokered candidate] and not get run out of town?” Gingrich said, referring to a potential Mitt Romney, who could walk onstage at the convention after a backroom deal.

Gingrich made those remarks before the votes came in last night.

The people spoke and they said Trump! Trump! Trump!

Trump doubled his lead in delegates over Cruz, and Trump is unstoppable. He does not need a majority of delegates. We can split pubic hairs all day, but taking the nomination away from the fellow with the most delegates is GOPicide, and there is no way the down ticket allows that. You think Trump is belligerent. Hah!

After coming up small handed on Tuesday, Rubio quit. Kasich is going to wait for a humiliating loss before bowing. Cruz keeps riding a Christian Conservative trail to Neverland. I respect his supporters, but you need more than that to win.

Trump has a good chance of bringing a majority to Cleveland. If not, I do not see how they strip him of the nomination if he has a 100-delegate lead.

And he has a 200-plus lead this morning.

Trump is bringing voters into the party -- new blood. They will shape the agenda. We will wind up with a better foreign policy, better trade agreements, and a smaller government. On the latter one, it is not that Trump necessarily wants, it is what his voters want. He's in retail. The customer is always right. He will govern from the bottom up.

UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight Politics has it Trump 652, Cruz 406 in delegates this morning, not counting Missouri. If that lead holds through to Cleveland, then 1,237 will not matter.

8 comments:

Trump wanted to get rid of all the losers early, and I think Rubio and Kasich and their vanity projects are what gave him the lead. I'm still behind Cruz, but I'll vote for Trump with one caveat: Kasich isn't his VP.

There will be no brokered convention because there are no brokers. The delegates are not minions of county chairmen and local elected officials.

At the same time, the breakdown of support between the three surviving candidates do offer the possibility of a hung or contested convention - one in which no candidate has an assured majority when the convention convenes. That's an outside chance.

Keep in mind that the surveyed support of Trump (35%) and Cruz (20%) hasn't changed much at all in the last 10 weeks. Eight candidates withdrew and it did not change much. If past is prologue, about 70% of Rubio's partisans will switch to Kasich and 30% will move into the undecided column, which will leave Trump with 35%, Kasich with 25%, Cruz with 20%, and the balance uncommitted. Popular balloting usually comes to be dominated by the leading candidate, but no such bandwagon has emerged yet. You'd have to go back to the 1972 Democratic contenst to find an example of a front-runner whose popular vote totals were as contextually modest.

Right on all counts, Don. I still think Trump will win a majority of the delegates, but even if he does not, he will be within a 100 of doing so. It is almost certain now that Cruz will be far ahead of Kasich by the end and it is almost 100% certain that he and Trump will make a deal with Cruz as the VP.

If the Republican Party does end up going with someone else in a brokered convention, Clinton will win with 55+% of the vote and bring both houses of Congress with her. It will be a bloodbath.